Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Buenos Aires, Argentina | 3rd Public Talk 19th July, 1935

Question: You are giving us chaotic theories and inciting us to useless revolt. I should like to have your answer to this statement.

Krishnamurti: I am not giving you any theories or inciting you to revolt. If I am capable of urging you towards rebellion, and if you yield to it, then another will come and put you to sleep again. (Laughter) So the important thing is to find out whether you are suffering. Now, a man who is suffering doesn't need to be urged towards rebellion; but he must keep awake to understand the cause of suffering, and not be put to sleep by explanations and ideals. If you consider very carefully you will see that, when there is suffering, there is a desire to be comforted, to be put to sleep. When you suffer, your immediate reaction is to seek comfort; and those who give you comfort, consolation, become for you an authority whom you blindly follow. Through that authority your suffering is explained away. The function of real suffering, which is to awaken intelligence, is denied through the search for comfort.

Now you have to ask yourself whether you as an individual are satisfied with the religious, social and economic conditions as they are, and if not, what your action is towards them. Not as a group or a mass, but as individuals. When you ask yourself this question, you must inevitably come into conflict with all those religious authorities and dogmas, with all those moralities based on selfish desires, and with that system which exploits the individual for the few. I am not inciting you to rebellion, or giving you new theories. I say that you can live with plenitude and intelligence when the mind frees itself from the stupidities of selfish, limited desires. When you begin to discover the true significance of the values that you have built about yourself, when the mind and heart free themselves from fear which has created doctrines, beliefs, ideals, which are continually impeding you, then there is fulfilment, the flow of reality.